MT 95/134

Roundabouts

Date range	1950-1960
Location	National Archives (see all files stored here)
Catalogue	See entry
File base	Series MT, subseries MT 95

Context

As the title suggests, this file was the dumping ground for roundabout business in the 1950s. It's principally concerned with their design.

For the most part, it contains correspondence between the Ministry and local authorities regarding specific roundabout installations - either those with accident problems, or planned upgrades, or the design of new junctions, etc.

It also includes a submission from a member of the public for a junction named (slightly egotistically) the "Foulkesway". It's a sort of Whirlpool/Turbine junction built within the space of a regular roundabout, with high walls to separate traffic flows on the single-lane sliproads that make it (in a balsa wood model shown in photographs) to be a strange cross between a prison, a maze and a series of interleaved rose petals. The Ministry wrote back to say that it would not meet design criteria and anything longer than a car would probably be scraping the walls to turn the corners (though they put it a little more tactfully).

Contents of note

• Photographs of various roundabouts on the A1, including A1/A61, where advance warning of the junction was thought to be a problem, circa October 1959.

• Plans of a proposed roundabout on the "Newcastle Inner Ring Road" at Manors - subsequently the GSJ to the north of the Tyne Bridge on Central Motorway East. The layout of this roundabout appears to have been retained as part of the motorway plan, though the underpass was not present in the 1950s version.

• The Foulkesway, in great depth, with diagrams, drawings and photographs of a model.

Links to other files

MT 95/484 Roundabouts design policy (1958-1967)

MT 95/485 Roundabouts design policy (1946-1969)

People with camera copies

Chris Marshall has copies of all the "contents of note" above, but nothing else.